Amber malt is one of the most versatile toasted malts around for brewers. The range of beers that amber malt can find itself in is wide in part due to its colour and the biscuity, toasted flavours it imparts. It can find itself in the darkest of beers, right through to amber beers and even […]
Orange wine is unique. Maybe not as popular as some of the other fruit wines but can make a great early evening sipper with a little thought going into the recipe. This recipe is good for any type of orange, tangerine, mandarin or blood orange so it is worth experimenting to find your perfect flavour. […]
Pineapple is a tropical fruit but even so, it is available year-round in many places, either fresh or in cans so it makes a great wine to make when other fruits are out of season. It’s great for bringing a tropical shine to even the coldest weather when not much else is growing. You’ve Never […]
It’s nearly December already. Every year around I has gotten into the habit of brewing a spiced beer for Christmas. My wife now insists that this happen and it’s turned into something of a family tradition. Usually, I would spice a whole batch of beer adding spices and flavourings at the end of the boil. […]
Black malt or black patent malt is one of the three main dark grains that are synonymous with brewing dark beers. Although it has not quite got the allure of chocolate malt or roasted barley, partly due to the name, it is still essential to brewing not only dark beers but adding colour and complexity […]
Roasted Barley is a highly kilned and roasted adjunct made with unmalted barley. It is one of the darkest grains available for brewing and often finds itself in recipes to add colour. This is not the end of it though because there is a massive amount of flavour in this grain and unlike the other […]
The name chocolate malt gives away a few clues about this dark highly kilned malt. Chocolate malt is a classic choice of malt for getting the colour and flavour that we want in porters although is it the best malt to get a chocolate tasting beer. In this article, we will take a look at […]
If there was ever a beer that was synonymous with a beer style then Duvel is it. As soon as you think of a Belgian golden strong ale, Duvel is the first beer you think of.
Duvel has a very simple recipe using just Pilsner malt, sugar and Bohemian hops. Combined with the Duvel yeast strain and really unique and precise beer is the outcome. Duvel is one of the first beers I tried to clone and it is not easy to replicate even with the simple ingredients.
Westvleteren brewery is the smallest of the 6 Trappist breweries and began brewing in 1839 in the St Sixtus Abbey at Westvleteren.
The brewery runs to support the monastery on a strictly non-commercial basis which means the beers produced by Westvleteren are very difficult to obtain.
Wesvleteren produce 3 beers:
Westvleteren Blonde at 5.8%
Westvleteren 8 at 8%
Westvleteren 12 at 10.8%
Westvleteren 12 is a dark mahogany brown quadruple style beer that uses relatively simple ingredients and processes to create a really complex beer that has been rated best beer in the world multiple times. This may be down to both the flavour and the extreme scarcity.
To say it is difficult to buy some of Westvleteren’s beer would be an understatement. There is no marketing or distribution, production is small at just 5000 hectolitres a year and you have to reserve the beer in a lottery based telephone reservation system, from the brewery.
Sierra Nevada created this IPA with the use of a “Hop Torpedo”, a device that was developed to aid dry hopping.
Previously, the brewery had been using nylon sacks to dry hop their beers, securing them to the fermenter. After pulling them out after the dry hopping period, Sierra Nevada found that there where still dry spots in the pellet hops. This was of course, not very efficient and the maximum amount of flavour and aroma wasn’t being extracted from the hops.
The brewery fabricated a “hop torpedo” that was essentially a stainless steel tube that is packed with whole leaf hops. Fermenting beer is pumped through the torpedo and back through to the fermenting vessel. The speed, time and temperature of the circulation allows a fairly good degree of control for extracting hop flavour.
Torpedo Extra IPA was Sierra Nevadas first year-round IPA and was released in 2009. Hop shortages meant the beer had to be allocated and demand has outpaced supply ever since.